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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

I’d smoke cigars all day and into the nightwhile I wrote and wrote withoutany hope or slightest assurancethat anything I’d written actually matteredor rose to a standard of literary merit.I’d languish in the smoke that did me inand call it the cloud of my unknowing,so sweet

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows

Squint a little, and that’s my husband in the photograph, the sailor on the left—the one wearing a rose composed of ink and the Little Bo Peep who standsbefore a tiny setting sun and the blur on his forearm which might be a boat—while the sailor on

The periodic pleasureof small happeningsis upon us—behind the stallsat the farmer’s marketsnow glinting in heaps,a cardinal its chestpuffed out, bloodshodabove the piles of awnings,passion’s proclivities;you picking up a sweet potatoturning to me ‘

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.
But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!
I took the elevator

Ten years of driving the same highway, past the same tree, the picture isat last complete. The eucalyptus tree and narrow birds above a blessedsteel sea with no thoughts of yesterday, today, or tomorrow.